I smoked a 1+ year old Shark yesterday afternoon in mourning of my good pal Clarence. We got him after my first year of college, so he was more my brother's dog (I'm 9 years older than my brother) but when my mom passed away a few years ago, a week before my brother went off to school, suddenly Clarence was the only one left in the house to keep my dad company.
My dad called yesterday morning and told me that Clarence had been hit by a car and killed about 6 miles from home on the opposite side of town. He was an unruly and untrainable (or perhaps just willful and deliberately disobedient...) dog, and was a constant tester of boundaries. He had recently figured out a new way to escape from the yard (a long standing arms race between him and my dad that we thought had ended a few years ago) that my dad absolutely couldn't figure out. He was 13.5 years old and too old to jump the fence, but we've got no other ideas how he escaped--no holes in or under the fence, gate still latched, propped shut and tied, etc. He had escaped before, but he never travelled that far ever before as far as we know.
I figured that the Shark was a poetic tribute to him given the number of our belongings he bit and/or chewed up over the course of his life. I accompanied the cigar with a glass from a ~30 year old bottle of Jim Beam that was once part of my grandfather's stocked bar.
A great cigar marred by unhappy circumstances.
RIP, Clarence. We'll miss you buddy.
